Witness Tree Data in Southern New England and Long Island 1640-1999

Early surveyors' witness-tree records from initial land divisions are often used to reconstruct the vegetation at the time of European settlement and before extensive Euro-American land use. The following description of methods comes from the published paper (Hall, B., G .Motzkin, D. R. Foster, M. Syfert and J. Burk. 2002. Three hundred years of forest and land-use change in Massachusetts, USA. Journal of Biogeography 29, 1319-1335): "Following methods described more fully in Cogbill et al. (2002), we used early surveyors' tree records from initial land divisions in each town to reconstruct the vegetation at the time of European settlement and before extensive Euro-American land use. All available original 17th - early 19th century survey records located at the state archives and individual town halls were examined and colloquial or common names of marker trees were noted... With few exceptions, only surveys that occurred within 80 years of town settlement were gathered in order to limit the potential influence of European land use on species composition."

早期土地划界中的测量员见证树（witness-tree）记录，常被用于重建欧洲殖民时期及欧美大规模土地开发前的植被状况。以下方法描述源自已发表文献（Hall, B., G. Motzkin, D. R. Foster, M. Syfert 与 J. Burk. 2002. 美国马萨诸塞州三百年间的森林与土地利用变化. 《生物地理学杂志》29卷，1319-1335页）："参考Cogbill等人（2002）详述的方法，我们利用各城镇初始土地划界中的早期测量员树记录，重建欧洲殖民时期及欧美大规模土地开发前的植被状况。我们对馆藏于州档案馆及各城镇市政厅的全部17世纪至19世纪早期原始测量记录进行了梳理，并记录了标记树的俗称或通用名称……除极少数例外，仅收集城镇殖民后80年内开展的测量记录，以限制欧美土地利用对物种组成的潜在影响。"